1746 in literature

Events

• May 9 – Voltaire, on being admitted into the Académie française, gives a discours de réception in which he criticizes Boileau's poetry.
• June 18 – Samuel Johnson signs a contract to compile A Dictionary of the English Language for a group of London booksellers at a literary breakfast.
• August 28 – A Native American massacre on this day of two white families in Deerfield, Massachusetts, gives rise to the first known poem by an African American, Lucy Terry, at the time a slave of around 16: "Bars Fight, August 28, 1746".
• October 4 – Irish actor Spranger Barry makes his London stage debut in the title role of Othello at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

• Carlo Goldoni's comedy Servant of Two Masters is given its probable first performance at the Teatro San Samuele, Venice.
• The oldest manuscript of Jean de Joinville's Life of Saint Louis is rediscovered in Brussels.
• Élie Catherine Fréron founds his controversial journal Lettres de la comtesse de...

  New books

Prose

• John Arbuthnot – Miscellanies
• John Collier as "Tim Bobbin" – A View of the Lancashire Dialect by way of dialogue between Tummus... and Meary...
• Zachary Grey – A Word or Two of Advice to William Warburton
• James Hervey – Meditations Among the Tombs
• Soame Jenyns – The Modern Fine Gentleman
• Jacques Rochette de La Morlière – Angola
• Pierre Louis Maupertuis – Astronomie nautique, volume 2
• Tobias Smollett – Advice
• Lauritz de Thurah – Den Danske Vitruvius, volume I
• John Upton – Critical Observations on Shakespeare
• Horace Walpole – The Beauties
• John Wesley
• *The Principles of a Methodist Father Explain'd
• *Sermons on Several Occasions

  Drama

• Pierre de Marivaux – Le Préjugé vaincu
• Takeda Izumo I, Takeda Izumo II, Namiki Sōsuke and Miyoshi Shōraku – Sugawara Denju Tenarai Kagami

  Poetry

• Thomas Blacklock – Poems
• William Collins – Odes
• Thomas Cooke – A Hymn to Liberty
• Christian Fürchtegott Gellert – Fabeln und Erzählungen
• Joseph Warton – Odes on Various Subjects
• See also 1746 in poetry''

  Births

• January 12 – Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Swiss educational reformer
• January 25 – Stéphanie Félicité, comtesse de Genlis, French writer, harpist, educator
• March 27 – Michael Bruce, Scottish poet
• April 3 – Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville, French fantasy novelist
• December 21 – José de la Cruz, Filipino writer

• Victor d'Hupay, French philosopher

  Deaths

• February 4 – Robert Blair, Scottish member of the "Graveyard poets"
• May 16 – Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, Italian Jewish rabbi, kabbalist, and philosopher
• May 22 – Thomas Southerne, Irish dramatist
• November 12 – Mary Leapor, English kitchenmaid poet
• December 6 – Lady Grizel Baillie, Scottish poet

• Frederic Count de Thoms, German biographer of King Louis XIV of France and art collector

• Anton Josef Kirchweger, Latin Pietist author

  In fiction

• D. K. Broster – The Flight of the Heron
• Ian Colquhoun – Drummossie Moor
• Diana Gabaldon – Dragonfly in Amber
• G. A. Henty – Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden
• Naomi Mitchison – The Bull Calves